P.Q. Phan: Reborn in the U.S.A.

Vietnamese Architect Becomes
American Composer

by Mic Holwin

A Vietnamese
architect tires of the aesthetic and personal restrictions under
Communist rule in the 1970s. He makes repeated attempts with his
family to escape to America, one by boat which ends in a Vietnamese
jail. Finally managing to emigrate legally, he becomes an American
citizen in 1982, when he is 20 years old. Exuberant with the freedom
he has at last found in America, the émigré architect
and self-taught pianist/composer decides to act on his love of music
and studies composition at the Universities of Southern California
and Michigan. Eighteen years later, he is an increasingly in-demand
American composer, commissioned by the likes of performers such as
the Kronos Quartet.

Sounds a bit
fantastic for a movie scenario. But it's every bit real life for
composer P.Q. Phan.

"Coming
to the U.S. is like being reborn," Phan says of his new
homeland. "When I was in Vietnam, it was like I was dead. It's
almost impossible to live in a place where you cannot express your
opinions. You can't even talk to people. Everything had to be propaganda."

Phan found it
repugnant to write music for the purpose of trumpeting the splendor
of the Communist party-in the same way that, he says, "I cannot
write music and say, 'oh how beautiful the Republican party is, the
Democratic party is!'"

Under
Communism, architecture had become unbearably practical, so Phan
turned to music as a means of expression. "With music I can be
more abstract, more creative, less obvious," he says of his move
from creating in space to creating in time. "There is no free
speech in a Communist country. So music makes perfect sense-you can
use it to express things in a very abstract way so that nobody can
punish you. It's a very effective way to communicate without telling
people what you really are thinking."

And once in
America, Phan, now an associate professor of composition at Indiana
University at Bloomington, did not find English his strongest talent,
so music once again fit the bill as an ideal method of communication.

With the world
premiere of his new orchestral work When the Worlds Mixed and Times
Merged at Carnegie Hall with the American Composers Orchestra on
October 15, Phan is obviously making himself understood. Commissioned
by ACO to write a piece celebrating the new millennium, Phan, though
schooled in Western composition, felt it wasn't yet an
intuitive-enough style with which to make a personal statement about
the new era. He opted instead to root the work in the
fondly-remembered sounds of his youth, traditional Vietnamese court music.

Phan utilizes
Western instrumental techniques, however, to conjure the sounds of
traditional Vietnamese instruments playing processional music for the
king as he approaches the throne in an outdoors dawn ceremony. He may
call for quarter tones in the strings, multiphonics in the woodwinds,
or a quick change from a major third to minor third to create the
"neutral third" found in Vietnamese scale systems.

Initially
conceived as a celebratory piece, When the Worlds Mixed ("How
could one not be cheerful thinking about the excitement of the turn
of the new millennium?" Phan writes in the piece's program
notes) had a change of tone when, in the summer of 1999, an Indiana
University student named Benjamin Nathaniel Smith went on an
Independence Day weekend drive-by shooting rampage against Jews,
blacks and Asian-Americans.

"It was
absolutely terrifying," writes Phan, "for it was so close
to home, my peaceful and sweet Midwest. The 'Heartland,' where life
is supposed to be simple, friendly and promising, became the land of
doubts and terrors to me."

A month later,
a similar incident occurred in California when a white supremacist in
California opened fire on a Jewish Community Center and a Filipino
postal worker. "The foundation I had built for 15 years-to love
and believe in my adopted country and its people-had partly
crumbled," Phan recalls of feelings that resulted in When the
Worlds Mixed's darker middle section. "A listener can certainly
hear struggles in there," he says. But, he quickly adds,
"You can hear hope in there as well."

For two weeks
in October leading up to the "Pacifica" Carnegie Hall
concert, Phan is Music Alive Composer-in-Residence with ACO, a
composer-orchestra matchmaking program of the American Symphony
Orchestra League and Meet The Composer. Phan will participate in a
variety of educational and performance activities that are part of
ACO's yearlong exploration of immigration, Coming to America:
Immigrant Sounds/ Immigrant Voices (see separate article). Part of
his residency includes workshops at the High School for Environmental
Studies and the programming of a chamber music concert of emerging
Asian-American composers, called "Pacifica Mix," at the
Japan Society on October 11, at which his work Beyond the Mountains
will be performed.

A piece that
also deals with social issues, Beyond the Mountains explores the
duality of, says Phan, "how I understand people and how people
understand me." A Vietnamese idiom, "beyond the
mountains" is used to describe "the expectation of the
unexpected," the passage into new and unfamiliar territory.
"Let's say you have a mountain," Phan explains. "One
side says 'this side is my home, the other side is the foreigner.'
But the foreigner on the other side says 'this side is my home, you
guys are the foreigner.'

"The
first half of the piece is finding my way to understand the new
culture and a way to express my culture to society. And the last part
is frustration. Even small comments occasionally make me feel upset.
Like people always say, 'where are you from?' I say 'Indiana' and
they say, 'no, no, where are you really from?'"

An all-Phan
CD, Banana Trumpet Games, was just released in August on CRI and
features six of Phan's chamber works, including Beyond the Mountains
and the title track, which is named for a Vietnamese children's game.
All six pieces, says Phan, deal with how he feels as an immigrant
through his blending of Southeast Asian with Western sounds.

In spite of
past and present societal struggles, Phan is an optimistic and upbeat
man. One would be hard-pressed to find a photo of him without a big
smile on his face. Even terrible times are remembered for their good aspects.

Recalling that
ill-fated boat escape, he laughs, "I tried to escape 10 times
and never succeeded. Thank goodness they caught only one! I was very,
very lucky that way. I finally came over here legally, so I'm very fortunate!"

Mic Holwin
is a design partner of Lost In Brooklyn Studio and writes on new
music for ACO, Chamber Music, American Music Center's web magazine
NewMusicBox and American Symphony Orchestra League's resource site NewMusicNow.